Swanson School of Engineering selected to receive $3.3 million to develop new electricity transmission technology

Funding is part of $11 million in funding from Department of Energy for High Voltage Direct Current Transmission Projects

University of Pittsburgh

 

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Part of the Swanson School's one-of-a-kind Electric Power Technologies Lab at the Energy Innovation Center.

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Credit: John Altdorfer/Swanson School of Engineering

This announcement was originally published by the Department of Energy.

The University of Pittsburgh is among four groundbreaking high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission research and development projects that are selected to receive a total of $11 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) and Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (EERE). The awards are part of the Innovative DEsigns for high-performAnce Low-cost HVDC Converters (IDEAL HVDC) funding opportunity.

Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering will lead a $3.3 million university/industry partnership using artificial intelligence to optimize an HVDC converter design for increased power density and decreased cost.

“The Swanson School is proud to lead this important effort with our partners, the Pennsylvania State University, Eaton, HICO-Hyosung, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL),” said Brandon Grainger, associate professor, Eaton Faculty Fellow, and PI of the program at the Swanson School. “By utilizing our unique Electric Power Technologies Lab (EPTL) at the Energy Innovation Center (EIC) in Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District, our goal is to design, build, and test a 13.8kVac to 25kVdc power converter necessary for this transmission technology.” Grainger, who is director of the EPTL, is also Associate Director of the Energy GRID Institute and Co-Director of the Advanced Magnetics for Power and Energy Development (AMPED) Consortium with its founder, Paul Ohodnicki, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science.

According to DOE, these projects will help to affordably integrate more renewable energy generation on land or far from shore (e.g., offshore wind) onto the grid via HVDC lines, reduce transmission system costs by 35 percent by 2035, and promote widespread technology adoption. OE is providing $8.1 million in funding and $3 million is coming from EERE.  

“This grant presents a great opportunity for us to explore and apply the modern HVDC R&D approach, with artificial intelligence-assisted design, to achieve the most demanding performance metrics while reducing costs,” explained YuAnn Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Pitt and a Pitt Co-PI. “AI provides excellent computing capability to flash forward on innovative power converter topologies and control, that previously would not be able to be achieved.”

The IDEAL projects are primed to help reinvent the power grid, which serves as an interstate highway for high-voltage electricity. HVDC transmission systems are more efficient than traditional alternating current (AC) transmission systems to deliver electricity over long distances at a lower cost while minimizing power losses.

“This was a highly competitive program, and our region should be proud to have received this significant support from DOE,” noted Fang Z. Peng, R.K. Mellon professor of electrical and computer engineering, director of Pitt’s Energy GRID Institute and a Pitt Co-PI. “Thanks to the investments in our one-of-a-kind facilities at the EIC, Pitt has become a national leader in HVDC research and development as well as high voltage power electronic systems.”

DOE further explained that many renewable resources are in remote locations on land or planned far from shore (e.g. offshore wind), and HVDC transmission provides a cost-effective solution for renewable integration onto the grid. And high-voltage transmission can more capably transfer power between different regions of the country without disrupting the frequency of either system, also helping to reduce delivery costs.

“Pitt has been a leader in transformative electric power engineering research for more than a century, and technologies like HVDC will take the U.S. and the world in a new direction for safe, efficient, and secure electric power transmission and distribution,” said David Vorp, Senior Associate Dean for Research & Facilities at the Swanson School of Engineering and John A. Swanson Professor of Bioengineering. “The Pitt laboratories at the EIC have evolved into a remarkable site where we can partner with industry, utilities, and academia to develop game-changing power products.”

Other IDEAL HVDC Projects include:

• GE Vernova Advanced Research: $3.3 million to develop a low-cost HVDC transmission access point substation to reduce HVDC life cycle costs by >30%. TAPS aims to provide access to affordable renewable energy to underserved and underrepresented communities.  
• Sandia National Laboratories: $1.8 million to increase the power density and reduce cost of HVDC converter stations by 10% by developing a technology of smaller 1.7 kilovolt (kV) switches that can be operated as a single 10 kV switch in a converter.  
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: $3 million to investigate promising circuit technologies to upgrade the existing HVDC converter design. This approach aims to reduce direct material technology costs by 15-20%.  

These selections are the first actions taken to support DOE’s HVDC COst REduction (CORE) Initiative, to improve grid resilience, security, and operation flexibility.  

“This represents another step forward in our mission to modernize the nation’s electric grid," said Gene Rodrigues, Assistant Secretary for Electricity. "By investing $11 million in innovative HVDC transmission projects, we're accelerating adoption of an innovative technology that can create pathways to integrate more low- cost renewable energy onto the power grid. This ensures that reliable, resilient, secure and affordable clean energy is available and accessible to all Americans.”  

Jeff Marootian, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, agreed. He said, “A modern grid requires a transmission network that can offer access to a diverse range of clean energy resources across geographic regions. These investments will help our efforts to improve energy reliability for consumers by better integrating both land and offshore power sources like wind onto the grid.”  

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